Julia Child Quotes

I'm very much for making everything safe. The more natural the means we use to raise our vegetables and get rid of bugs, the better. ~ Julia Child

I had my first French meal and I never got over it. It was just marvelous. We had oysters and a lovely dry white wine. And then we had one of those lovely scalloped dishes and the lovely, creamery buttery sauce. Then we had a roast duck and I don't know what else. ~ Julia Child

It's fun to get together and have something good to eat at least once a day. That's what human life is all about - enjoying things. ~ Julia Child

Sometimes ... it takes me an entire day to write a recipe, to communicate it correctly. It's really like writing a little short story. ~ Julia Child

Remember, you are all alone in the kitchen and no one can see you. ~ Julia Child

If a tourist enters a food stall thinking he's going to be cheated, the salesman will sense this and obligingly cheat him. But if a Frenchman senses that a visitor is delighted to be in his store, and takes a genuine interest in what is for sale, then he'll just open up like a flower. ~ Julia Child

Ye gods! But you're not standing around holding it by the hand all this time. No. [ ... ] [T]he dough takes care of itself. [ ... ] While you cannot speed up the process, you can slow it down at any point by setting the dough in a cooler place [ ... ] then continue where you left off, when you are ready to do so. In other words, you are the boss of that dough. ~ Julia Child

Wine is one of the agreeable and essential ingredients of life ~ Julia Child

One of the secrets, and pleasures, of cooking is to learn to correct something if it goes awry; and one of the lessons is to grin and bear it if it cannot be fixed. ~ Julia Child

People liked to eat veal until they saw pictures of these darling little animals with brown eyes. Veal calves been raised the same way for centuries. ~ Julia Child

RECIPIES A Coq au Vin of a Different Color The red-wine casserole Julia Child sold us on was just one take on the classic dish. This pale-gold variant offers a je ne sais quoi all its own. By Gail Monaghan | 741 words ~ Anonymous

It is hard to imagine a civilization without onions. ~ Julia Child

I have trouble with toast. Toast is very difficult. You have to watch it all the time or it burns up. ~ Julia Child

As a girl, I had zero interest in the stove. I've always had a healthy appetite, especially for the wonderful meat and the fresh produce of California, but I was never encouraged to cook and just didn't see the point in it. ~ Julia Child

Nothing is too much trouble if it turns out the way it should. ~ Julia Child

Cooking hasn't yet been accepted as the art form it is. It should be on the level with any of the other art forms. ~ Julia Child

If you're not ready to fail, you're not going to learn how to cook. ~ Julia Child

Fine # wine is a living liquid ... Its life comprises youth, maturity, old age, and death. ~ Julia Child

Romance is the icing but love is the cake. ~ Julia Child

Standing up through the Citroen's open sunroof, my six-foot-three-inch, red-cheeked sister pointed a long, trembling finger at the perpetrator and with maximum indignation yelled: 'Ce merde-monsieur a justement crache dans ma derriere!' Her intended meaning is obvious, but what she said was, 'This shit-man just spat out into my butt! ~ Julia Child

As you get older, you shouldn't waste time drinking bad wine. ~ Julia Child

Rognons de Veau à la Bordelaise is simplicity itself to make; no different, essentially, from Poulet Sauté, and no different, especially, from Bifteck Sauté Bercy. In fact, making it that night felt like falling into a time warp- I stood before the stove, melting butter and browning meat and smelling the smells of wine deglazing and shallots softening- but the dishes changed before my eyes, and I heard Julia warbling, "Boeuf Bourguignon is the same as Coq au Vin. You can use lamb, you can use veal, you can use pork.... ~ Julie Powell

Of the people who cook on television, I have admired people like Jacques Pepin, Julia Child, Mario Batali, Jamie Oliver and a few others because they are free of drama, display good taste and masterful technique, and use clear exposition to bring you up to speed. ~ Steve Albini

In France, Paul explained, good cooking was regarded as a combination of national sport and high art, and wine was always served with lunch and dinner. "The trick is moderation," he said. ~ Julia Child

Cassoulet, that best of bean feasts, is everyday fare for a peasant but ambrosia for a gastronome, though its ideal consumer is a 300-pound blocking back who has been splitting firewood nonstop for the last twelve hours on a subzero day in Manitoba. ~ Julia Child

The more you know, the more you can create. There's no end to imagination in the kitchen. ~ Julia Child

I didn't start cooking until I was thirty-two. Until then, I just ate. - Julia Child ~ Kathleen Flinn

My sievelike mind didn't want to lock away dates and details; it wanted to float and meander. If I mixed all those facts and these up with a little gelatine and egg white, I wondered, would they stick together better? ~ Julia Child

You must have discipline to have fun. ~ Julia Child

I like every part of growing older except what happens to your feet.
Written by Avis DeVoto to Julia Child in As Always, Julia ~ Joan Reardon

Someone may offer you a freshly caught whole large fish, like a salmon or striped bass. Don't panic - take it! ~ Julia Child

I'm not a chef. I think in this country, we use the term very loosely. I'm a cook and a teacher. ~ Julia Child

I was kind of an innocent hayseed from a middle-class, utterly nonintellectual background. ~ Julia Child

The Parisian grocers insisted that I interact with them personally: if I wasn't willing to take the time to get to know them and their wares, then I would not go home with the freshest legumes or cuts of meat in my basket. They certainly made me work for my supper-- but, oh, what suppers! ~ Julia Child

IN EGGPLANT CASSEROLE, ~ Julia Child

After we'd moved into 81, we had placed an order for a phone, and waited. First a man came by to see if we lived where we said we did. Then two men visited to make a "study" of our situation. Then another man appeared to find out if we really wanted a phone. The process was very French, and made me laugh, especially when I thought of how quickly such a transaction would have taken place in the States. ~ Julia Child

A party without cake is really just a meeting. ~ Julia Child

Eating is the secret to good cooking. ~ Julia Child

We had a happy marriage because we were together all the time. We were friends as well as husband and wife. We just had a good time. ~ Julia Child

The art of bread making can become a consuming hobby, and no matter how often and how many kinds of bread one has made, there always seems to be something new to learn. ~ Julia Child

With enough butter, anything is good ~ Julia Child

Remember, 'No one's more important than people'! In other words, friendship is the most important thing
not career or housework, or one's fatigue
and it needs to be tended and nurtured. ~ Julia Child

I don't use the word gourmet. The word doesn't mean anything anymore. 'Gourmet' makes it sound like someone is putting sherry wine in the corn-flake casserole. ~ Julia Child

It was fun, although we felt like pawns, or prawns, in the maelstrom. ~ Julia Child

Too much trouble,' 'Too expensive,' or 'Who will know the difference' are death knells for good food ... Cooking is not a particularly difficult art, and the more you cook and learn about cooking, the more sense it makes. ~ Julia Child

The war broke out, and I wanted to do something to aid my country in a time of crisis. I was too tall for the WACs and WAVES, but eventually joined the OSS and set out into the world looking for adventure. ~ Julia Child

I was in Italy in 1992 working on magazine articles when I got a call from the Italian travel commission. They asked, would I mind being an escort for an older woman? I told them I don't do that kind of work, but then they said it was Julia Child, and I said I'd be right there. ~ Bob Spitz

I would far prefer to have things happen as they naturally do, such as the mousse refusing to leave the mold, the potatoes sticking to the skillet, the apple charlotte slowly collapsing. One of the secrets of cooking is to learn to correct something if you can, and bear with it if you cannot. ~ Julia Child

I'd like for people to be able to go to the universities and get a degree in fine arts-gastronomy. ~ Julia Child

The sweetness and generosity and politeness and gentleness and humanity of the French had shown me how lovely life can be if one takes time to be friendly. ~ Julia Child

Well, all I know is this - nothing you ever learn is really wasted, and will sometime be used. ~ Julia Child

Fake food
I mean those patented substances chemically flavored and mechanically bulked out to kill the appetite and deceive the gut
is unnatural, almost immoral, a bane to good eating and good cooking. ~ Julia Child

The problem for cookery-bookery writers like me is to understand the extent of our readers' experience. I hope have solved that riddle in my books by simply telling everything. The experienced cook will know to skip through the verbiage, but the explanations will be there for those who still need them. ~ Julia Child

Flavor-wise, chicken started moving in the wrong direction when the high-energy diet appeared, so much so that Julia Child sounded the alarm in 1961. ~ Mark Schatzker

Forget the cheap white wine: go to beef and gin! ~ Julia Child

A method of schooling founded by the Italian educator Maria Montessori that emphasizes collaborative, explorative learning, and whose alumni include Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page; Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales; video-game designer Will Wright; Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos; chef Julia Child; and rap impresario Sean Combs. ~ Daniel Coyle

Cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music. And cooking draws upon your every talent
science, mathematics, energy, history, experience
and the more experience you have, the less likely are your experiments to end in drivel and disaster. The more you know, the more you can create. ~ Julia Child

What a marvelous resource soup is for the thrifty cook - it solves the ham-bone and lamb-bone problems, the everlasting Thanksgiving turkey, the extra vegetables. ~ Julia Child

I was a Republican until I got to New York and had to live on $18 a week. It was then that I became a Democrat. ~ Julia Child

I was never a spy. I was with the OSS organization. We had a number of women, but we were all office help. ~ Julia Child

The spectacle of this lovely nation, with its great agricultural wealth and its cultural riches , continually stepping on its own toes, made me wonder if France suffered a kind of national neurosis ~ Julia Child

Operational proof ... it's all theory until you see for yourself whether or not something works. ~ Julia Child

I admired the English immensely for all that they had endured, and they were certainly honorable, and stopped their cars for pedestrians, and called you "sir" and "madam," and so on. But after a week there, I began to feel wild. It was those ruddy English faces, so held in by duty, the sense of "what is done" and "what is not done," and always swigging tea and chirping, that made me want to scream like a hyena ~ Julia Child

Julia Child wasn't afraid to have fun. She made fantastic food but knew how to have a good time and not be too stuck up about the kitchen space. ~ Nadia Giosia

Pro-choice is the only way to be
because women are human beings, after all, and should be treated as such. ~ Julia Child

I could at times be overly emotional, but was lucky to have the kind of orderly mind that is good at categorizing things ~ Julia Child

The perfect dressing is essential to the perfect salad, and I see no reason whatsoever for using a bottled dressing, which may have been sitting on the grocery shelf for weeks, even months - even years. ~ Julia Child

Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in the basement. Other people get a tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music. ~ Julia Child

In fact, I didn't like traveling first class at all. Yes, it was nice to have a bathroom in a hotel and fine service at breakfast...but none of it seemed foreign enough for me. It was all so pleasantly bland that I felt as if I were back on the SS America. I don't like it when everyone speaks perfect English; I'd much rather struggle with my phrasebook. ~ Julia Child

Once you have mastered a technique, you barely have to look at a recipe again ~ Julia Child

I love good, fresh food cooked by someone who knows what he's doing. ~ Julia Child

My own life is wonderful, but if I had to live the life of someone else, I'd gladly choose that of Julia Child or Dr. Seuss: two outrageously original people, each of whom fashioned an idiosyncratic wisdom, passion for life, and sense of humor into an art form that anyone and everyone could savor. ~ Julia Glass

It's simply a very romantic place. Just one look at any of those streets, and you couldn't be anywhere else - it's so beautiful, and there's that location, and the sense of the free spirit. Who couldn't become ravenous in such a place? ~ Julia Child

In department stores, so much kitchen equipment is bought indiscriminately by people who just come in for men's underwear. ~ Julia Child

Be a fearless cook! Try out new ideas and new recipes, but always buy the freshest and finest ingredients, whatever they may be. Furnish your kitchen with the most solid and workmanlike equipment you can find. Keep your knives ever sharp and - toujours bon appetit! ~ Julia Child

The measure of achievement is not winning awards. It's doing something that you appreciate, something you believe is worthwhile. ~ Julia Child

No one's more important than people. ~ Julia Child

I always give my bird a generous butter massage before I put it in the oven. Why? Because I think the chicken likes it
and, more important, I like to give it. ~ Julia Child

A cookbook is only as good as its poorest recipe. ~ Julia Child

I fell in love with the public, the public fell in love with me, and I tried to keep it that way. ~ Julia Child

The secret of a happy marriage is finding the right person. You know they're right if you love to be with them all the time. ~ Julia Child

The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook. ~ Julia Child

We don't like to talk about that in America, but there are classes in America. And she [Julia Child] was of a class of women who were wealthy, privately educated, went to Smith, moved in that sort of circle. She was conscripted into the OSS, which is the early CIA, which was all filled with Yalies and Princeton and Harvard people and a few women who were typing mostly but also had something to do. ~ Meryl Streep

People were hysterical about Communism the way people today are hysterical about flag burning. I'm really against these people who try to show that they're great patriots, because they're not thinking, they're just being hysterical. ~ Julia Child

I'm not wild about those twenty-four hour marinades ~ Julia Child

My mom had Julia Child and 'The Fannie Farmer Cookbook' on top of the refrigerator, and she had a small repertoire of French dishes. ~ Anthony Bourdain

Had been a year earlier. Looking back, it had been a year of growth. Paul's personality had enlarged, he'd gained further wisdom, if not salary, ~ Julia Child

I never feel lonely in the kitchen. Food is very friendly. ~ Julia Child

If you drop the lamb, just pick it up. Who's going to know? ~ Julia Child

If you need a reference point, she was created in a grandma lab somewhere by crossing the DNA of Mary Poppins, Jack Black, Julia Child and Desmond Tutu. ~ Scott Dannemiller

We hit it off immediately, especially Helene, who was a 'swallow-life-in-big-gulps' kind of person. ~ Julia Child

Cooking is one failure after another, and that's how you finally learn. ~ Julia Child

A house without a cat is like a day without sunshine, a pie without fromage, a dinner without wine. ~ Julia Child

Our bodies hummed with contentment. ~ Julia Child

Corporate America was hurling offers at her. Thinking even bigger, wanting even more, she had dreams of starting a Martha Stewart magazine and starring in her own regularly scheduled Martha Stewart television show. Martha saw herself as Betty Crocker, Julia Child, Miss Manners, Emily Post, and Rupert Murdoch all rolled into one juicy pie. ~ Jerry Oppenheimer

I love to teach - that's my role. ~ Julia Child

The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude. ~ Julia Child

I believe in red meat. I often said: red meat and gin. ~ Julia Child

It's hard to imagine a civilization without onions; in one form or another their flavor blends into almost everything in the meal except the desert. ~ Julia Child

The cooking was invigorating, joyous. For Julia, the cooking fulfilled the promises that Le Cordon Bleu had made but never kept. Where Le Cordon Bleu always remained rooted in the dogma of French cuisine, Julia strove to infuse its rigors with new possibilities and pleasures. It must have felt liberating for her to deconstruct Carême and Escoffier, respecting the traditions and technique while correcting the oversight. "To her," as a noted food writer indicated, "French culinary tradition was a frontier, not a religion." If a legendary recipe could be improved upon, then let the gods beware. ~ Bob Spitz